Christian worldview

Free speech: You’re doing it wrong

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Via Video: Liberals Love Free Speech Like Fish Love Bicycles | Verum Serum — Here are the stats on what the book lovers wanted banned:

Yep, they find Palin, Beck and Coulter worse than Hitler.

Pathetic.

10 thoughts on “Free speech: You’re doing it wrong”

    1. Thanks for the link. Not to nit-pick, but those books were challenged, not banned from public consumption, and seemed to have logical reasons for at least some of them (age appropriateness).

      My wife is a school librarian and refuses to join the ALA. She understands why some books are appropriate and some are not. The ALA is a perverted organization that did a whole fluff piece issue of their magazine advancing the gay agenda.

      Re. Twilight: The TV show Parks & Recreation had a funny spot where Twilight was deemed by some to be unfit for the town’s time capsule because it was too Christian, and deemed unfit by others because it wasn’t Christian enough.

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  3. Hitler has been gone for a long time, for one. Unless you lived in one of the countries that were terrorized by his regime, it’s easy to underestimate the magnitude of the horror he inflicted on the world.

    At the same time, I wonder why Karl Marx didn’t make the list – it is easy to make the case that communism has inflicted much more human suffering than Naziism did, if only because it went on for a much, much longer period of time over dozens of countries. In fact, it’s still oppressing people today.

    Like Naziism, I find those who are old enough to remember life under communism…are the ones who have the least use for it. Talk to anyone over 40 who grew up in a country like Poland or Ukraine.

    The fact that a couple of media figures are seen as more dangerous than the ideas first unleashed in Germany 80 years ago…is a rather stinging indictment of our media and education apparatus, methinks. It boggles the mind.

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    1. Yes, Hitler is the typical example given, but Communism killed many times what he did. I recently read a couple historical fiction pieces about life in Germany and Russia in WWII that were chilling reminders of how bad they were and how they got that way.

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      1. Interesting isn’t it? Interesting that Christianity had to be driven off (meaning kill or drive off its believers) before either of these hateful, destructive ideologies could take root.

        The point is that like nature, politics & religion abhor a vacuum. You drive off God….someone else will take His place. You know who I mean.

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  4. If you care to read some actual data, here is a list of the top 10 most-challenged books in public libraries:

    I haven’t read any of the books on that list except for #3, Brave New World, and it’s interesting because I was actually required to read it in high school…and I’m not that old!

    Quite frankly that’s a book everyone needs to read. It was penned some sixty years ago and is frighteningly prophetic about the kind of world and kind of society that has been unleashed by technology. It describes a world gone mad – almost completely free of morality or consequences. One where the perverse is normal, where the sacred is taboo.

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    1. Yes, very true. Huxley warned us about a future where ideology masked as religion trumps rational thinking. He was a committed pacifist and humanist (and good friend of Christopher Isherwood).

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  5. Neil, Michael’s point is that it is not liberals who actively try to get books banned. I may despise Coulter’s books (and I do, and not for reasons that you would think), but under no circumstances would I have them banned. Her books, and those of Palin et al., are more dangerous than those of Hitler and others because there are nuts who take them seriously as serious political commentators with something pertinent to say. Are they wrong? Yes. Are they mean? Yes. Are they dangerous to healthy discussion? Yes. Should they be banned? No, No, No, No, No.

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    1. there are nuts who take them seriously as serious political commentators with something pertinent to say.

      I guess that makes me a “nut” then, because I do indeed regard them as serious and pertinent.

      If you really think Palin, Coulter, et al are that dangerous, however, then I should think you’d be in favor of banning them. Ideas that are not merely stupid but in fact “dangerous” should be kept away from the public, don’t you think?

      You simply say you aren’t proposing such action, because to do so would expose you as a hypocrite. (Not to worry though, you’ve got plenty of comrades over on the Left that do want to burn our books.)

      Take a leftist counterpart to those names, such as Michael Moore. I happen to think his movies encourage violence and radical thinking on the Left.

      It’s been my concern for some time that people might listen to him, or to Al Gore, or to any number of other alarmists, and be encouraged to take up arms against what they see as the enemies of the Earth’s climate…or any number of reckless thinks Moore has said which probably serve to encourage our jihadist enemies abroad.

      However, I not only don’t want Moore and Gore banned, I don’t even think they’re dangerous, in contrast to how you regard the Right’s favorite media figures. The only censorship I can responsibly argue for is self censorship. I think these men should be responsible enough on their own to watch what they say in public.

      What I think these men are, is stupid. Both are easily proven wrong and exposed as liars and a fakes. As someone wiser than me once said (maybe it was Thomas Jefferson), air and light are natural disinfectants. The way to stop nonsense ideas from spreading is to allow them to be heard, thus exposing them to refutation and ridicule.

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